Not sure why people take him so seriously. He is a graphics programmer and nothing more. He is not a programming language designer, he is not an operating system designer, etc. There's plenty he doesn't know.

The only things you might be interested to hear from him is either graphics or business related things. That's it.

Not sure why people take him so seriously. He is a graphics programmer and nothing more. He is not a programming language designer, he is not an operating system designer, etc. There's plenty he doesn't know.

The only things you might be interested to hear from him is either graphics or business related things. That's it.

Why ppl take him seriously?Because he's one of the visionaries of the games industy. And one that's quite vocal in his (usually well founded) opinions.

Why ppl take him seriously?Because he's one of the visionaries of the games industy. And one that's quite vocal in his (usually well founded) opinions.

He's overrated. He made a good software 3D rendering engine and it looked impressive - so different from what people were used to seeing that they elevated him to some sort of programming god status.... Then eventually the Quake code was released and if you took a look you could see how crappy it was

He's overrated. He made a good software 3D rendering engine and it looked impressive - so different from what people were used to seeing that they elevated him to some sort of programming god status.... Then eventually the Quake code was released and if you took a look you could see how crappy it was

Since when does it matter what the code looks like?

The point is that he did so many innovations in 3D rendering engines (using hw accellerated OpenGL in a game, curved surfaces, using bump mapping to suggest more polygons in models, 'carmacks reverse' etc) and made so many interesting business decisions (share ware, staying independent, open sourcing his game engines for example), that he became one of the most prominent people in the games industry, and IMHO very rightfully so.

I don't know why some people are so eager to downplay his contributions to the games industry.

I'm not arguing he's not talented. I'm just saying that1) He's not really visionaryand2) It's not just his technical achievements that make people listen to him.

He's a very talented game engine programmer. He had a team of very talented artists and visionaries helping him to create some of the best games ever made.However, he wasn't the first to invent or implement any of the things you listed. He did popularize a lot of them, though, but that's probably because the games were massive commercial successes (and very awesome).

If people went by pure technical innovation, people would listen a lot more to the old Blue Sky Productions team. Ultima Underworld was released several months prior to Wolfenstein 3D, and featured full texturemapped 3D gameplay, and was a great game to boot.

I have fond memories of Midi Maze on my old Atari Mega 2, but from a game engine pov it was nothing special (apart from the nifty MIDI based networking).

So which FPS game engine before Quake3 had curved surfaces?

Anyway, at the very worst 'visionary' might be stretching things a bit, but I'm still not sure how one can deny his influence in gaming history.I'm absolutely not in the "Carmack is teh awesome 3d codez god" camp, but there's no denying he's one of the best at what he does, and he is also vocal in his opinions and he's often right. So my point is: No wonder the media takes note and take him seriously; they'd be stupid not to.

Ah, Frontier, I remember that game too from my Atari I can't remember though if those curved surfaces were still curves up close, like in Q3?I'm talking about the mountains in the back, the 2D curves like in the foreground don't count

I'm not arguing he's not talented. I'm just saying that1) He's not really visionaryand2) It's not just his technical achievements that make people listen to him.

One of his secrets that he revealed was that he read a lot of material from local universities and high schools. He has this huge luck for discovering really young talent, which makes himself look good. In other words, he knows how to invest in others. Whether he does it in a good or bad manner, I don't know since wisdom comes in both equally good and evil varieties. Like Bill Gates, he used other people's ideas and made them happen along with his own.

It just so happens that he had a friend who had connections for financial backing, and after Doom caught the attention of major corporations both in software and hardware, his product helped other products sell by presenting free content.

As far as Quake goes, his development team found themselves forced to listen and cooperate with their art studio team. Quake had so many bugs, but the open source community cleaned up a lot somehow. Someone in his group organization had the keen sense of keeping a clean divide between the free and non-free content.

Its odd how software developers are suppose to get paid more yet code goes to the ownership of others. On the other hand, artists typically receive less pay, but their content has the highest protection in a premium environment. In fact, artistic endeavors add the definition of premium to code in the first place. John Carmack would be nowhere without artists, who happened to consist the bulk of his "visionaries." After that, I guess luck took over.

One of his secrets that he revealed was that he read a lot of material from local universities and high schools. He has this huge luck for discovering really young talent, which makes himself look good. In other words, he knows how to invest in others. Whether he does it in a good or bad manner, I don't know since wisdom comes in both equally good and evil varieties. Like Bill Gates, he used other people's ideas and made them happen along with his own.

...

After that, I guess luck took over.

That's pretty much my view of it. He was obviously smart enough to understand and apply the papers he read from other people's research and I'm sure he contributed many of his own ideas... but I would bet several of the regulars here are equally talented. Carmack is unique because he made a few key decisions that made him very rich.

Take a look at the timeline of games from id (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack) E.g. Wolfenstien 3D was 1992 at that time I had already seen some interesting things done with realtime 3D rendering on PCs where I was going to university http://www.ece.uwaterloo.ca/~broehl/rend386.html. This was a hot topic at the time and lots of people were comingup with rendering algorithms - Carmack got it on a shareware game that was very popular so his name is now permanently associated with the birth of 3D computer graphics.

During the development of the games that made him and id software big, he had few committments and was doing what he loved day in day out - games programming.

Now he has other committments and is doing what he loves *now* - X prize/rocket challenges - so I think it's only natural that life and other interests have started to take time away from his once constant love of games programming...

That's not to say he won't continue to drive excellent tech in his own company and with others (still on the Open GL ARB too I think?) but he himself has sung the praises of others doing grand job (e.g. Epic) and knows id software couldn't rule the roost forever. Besides, he just wanted "to make great games".

Don't worry Doom fans, I'm sure he'll take time out his rocket building and make time for games when it counts: (from ArmadilloAerospace) : "John has been so busy with his duties at id Software"

"He was obviously smart enough to understand and apply the papers he read from other people's research"

"I'm sure he contributed many of his own ideas... "

"...he made key decisions that made him very rich"

...yet he's overrated because the Q2 source didn't look nice, because he didn't invent all the techniques he put in his engines and because he isn't a programming language designer

I think I get it

You are overstating my objection. I simply think he is overrated because he gets credit for the parts he didn't do and a significant portion of what made him famous was largely a side-effect of being in the right place at the right time. He has skills and deserves credit for them... but he's put on this pedistal that is significantly too high. E.g. Duke Nuke'm had a better 3D engine than what id had at the time but nobody cares.The Quake code being butt ugly and poorly architected is just an indicator that he and the others at id weren't the sort of super-beings that they are often made out to be.

...and criticizing the mobile carriers as the biggest limitation in mobile development!

Pls, people in the Mobile business have been complaining about this (and other stuff) since before mr Carmack even began doing anything with mobiles.People act like he is Columbus, when there were more people that have already discovered America before him.

But I said it before and I will say it again, the Carriers and the Phone manufacturers do not care what mr Carmack says.If they even know him.

He might be a visionary when it comes to gfx development but I hate to say this but otherwise there is not much in those games.

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